Author name cluster

Jean Decety

Possible papers associated with this exact author name in Arrow. This page groups case-insensitive exact name matches and is not a full identity disambiguation profile.

23 papers

1 author row

YNICL Journal 2022 Journal Article

Psychopathic traits modulate functional connectivity during pain perception and perspective-taking in female inmates

Keith J. Yoder
Carla L. Harenski
Kent A. Kiehl
Jean Decety

The ability to share and understand the distress of others is critical for successful social interactions and is a fundamental building block of morality. Psychopathy is a personality disorder that includes lack of empathy and concern for others. In the present study, functional MRI was used to examine neural responses and functional connectivity associated with empathy and affective perspective-taking in female inmates (N = 109) with various levels of psychopathic traits, as measured with Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Participants viewed hands and feet in painful or non-painful situations while adopting a first person or third person perspective. All participants demonstrated robust neural responses in anterior insula (aINS), anterior cingulate (ACC), temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and supplementary motor area (SMA) when viewing pain, both during imagine-self and imagine-other blocks. Psychopathy shifted the functional connectivity seeded in core nodes of the salience and social cognition networks. Perceiving stimuli depicting somatic pain led to decreased functional coupling from right temporoparietal junction to superior temporal sulcus, which correlated with scores on PCL-R Factor 1 (Affective/Interpersonal). In contrast, connectivity from right insula to precuneus increased with Factor 2 (Lifestyle/Antisocial) scores. When adopting a third-person perspective, psychopathic traits modulated connectivity from the social cognition network, but not the salience network, with Factor 1 scores associated with increased connectivity to sensorimotor cortex and temporal pole, while Factor 2 scores were associated with decreased connectivity with ACC/SMA and inferior frontal gyrus. Overall, these results demonstrate that psychopathic traits in incarcerated females are associated with atypical functional connectivity within the salience network during pain-empathy processing and within the social cognition network during affective perspective-taking.

YNICL Journal 2021 Journal Article

Neural responses to morally laden interactions in female inmates with psychopathy

Keith J. Yoder
Carla Harenski
Kent A. Kiehl
Jean Decety

Much of social cognition requires making inferences about the mental and emotional states of others. Moreover, understanding the emotions of others is an important foundation for moral decision-making. Psychopathy is associated with both aberrant emotional understanding and atypical hemodynamic responses when viewing and evaluating morally laden social interactions. In the present functional MRI study, female inmates (N = 107) were asked to evaluate the likely emotional state of either the recipient or the initiator of harmful or helpful interactions. Psychopathy was assessed with the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). PCL-R scores were not associated with differences in confidence or accuracy ratings. However, psychopathy scores were significantly related to increased hemodynamic response in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex when viewing harmful interactions and decreased functional connectivity from right amygdala to inferior parietal cortex and insula, and from temporal parietal junction to dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Overall, this work indicates that in females, psychopathy is associated with normal behavioral accuracy and confidence but alterations in neural network activity during moral decision-making.

YNIMG Journal 2020 Journal Article

Psychopathy is associated with fear-specific reductions in neural activity during affective perspective-taking

Philip Deming
Monika Dargis
Brian W. Haas
Michael Brook
Jean Decety
Carla Harenski
Kent A. Kiehl
Michael Koenigs

Psychopathic individuals are notorious for their callous disregard for others’ emotions. Prior research has linked psychopathy to deficits in affective mechanisms underlying empathy (e. g. , affective sharing), yet research relating psychopathy to cognitive mechanisms underlying empathy (e. g. , affective perspective-taking and Theory of Mind) requires further clarification. To elucidate the neurobiology of cognitive mechanisms of empathy in psychopathy, we administered an fMRI task and tested for global as well as emotion-specific deficits in affective perspective-taking. Adult male incarcerated offenders (N = 94) viewed images of two people interacting, with one individual's face obscured by a shape. Participants were cued to either identify the emotion of the obscured individual or identify the shape from one of two emotion or shape choices presented on each trial. Target emotions included anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral. Contrary to predictions, psychopathy was unrelated to neural activity in the Affective Perspective-taking > Shape contrast. In line with predictions, psychopathy was negatively related to task accuracy during affective perspective-taking for fear, happiness, and sadness. Psychopathy was related to reduced hemodynamic activity exclusively during fear perspective-taking in several areas: left anterior insula extending into posterior orbitofrontal cortex, right precuneus, left superior parietal lobule, and left superior occipital cortex. Although much prior research has emphasized psychopathy-related abnormalities in affective mechanisms mediating empathy, current results add to growing evidence of psychopathy-related abnormalities in a cognitive mechanism related to empathy. These findings highlight brain regions that are hypoactive in psychopathy when explicitly processing another's fear.

YNICL Journal 2019 Journal Article

Psychopathy is associated with shifts in the organization of neural networks in a large incarcerated male sample

Scott Tillem
Keith Harenski
Carla Harenski
Jean Decety
David Kosson
Kent A. Kiehl
Arielle Baskin-Sommers

Psychopathy is a personality disorder defined by antisocial behavior paired with callousness, low empathy, and low interpersonal emotions. Psychopathic individuals reliably display complex atypicalities in emotion and attention processing that are evident when examining task performance, activation within specific neural regions, and connections between regions. Recent advances in neuroimaging methods, namely graph analysis, attempt to unpack this type of processing complexity by evaluating the overall organization of neural networks. Graph analysis has been used to better understand neural functioning in several clinical disorders but has not yet been used in the study of psychopathy. The present study applies a minimum spanning tree graph analysis to resting-state fMRI data collected from male inmates assessed for psychopathy with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (n = 847). Minimum spanning tree analysis provides several metrics of neural organization optimality (i. e. , the effectiveness, efficiency, and robustness of neural network organization). Results show that inmates higher in psychopathy exhibit a more efficiently organized dorsal attention network (β = =0. 101, pcorrected = =0. 018). Additionally, subcortical structures (e. g. , amygdala, caudate, and hippocampus) act as less of a central hub in the global flow of information in inmates higher in psychopathy (β = =−0. 104, pcorrected = =0. 048). There were no significant effects of psychopathy on neural network organization in the default or salience networks. Together, these shifts in neural organization suggest that the brains of inmates higher in psychopathy are organized in a fundamentally different way than other individuals.

YNICL Journal 2019 Journal Article

Resting-state fMRI dynamic functional network connectivity and associations with psychopathy traits

Flor A. Espinoza
Nathaniel E. Anderson
Victor M. Vergara
Carla L. Harenski
Jean Decety
Srinivas Rachakonda
Eswar Damaraju
Michael Koenigs

Studies have used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) to examine associations between psychopathy and brain connectivity in selected regions of interest as well as networks covering the whole-brain. One of the limitations of these approaches is that brain connectivity is modeled as a constant state through the scan duration. To address this limitation, we apply group independent component analysis (GICA) and dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) analysis to uncover whole-brain, time-varying functional network connectivity (FNC) states in a large forensic sample. We then examined relationships between psychopathic traits (PCL-R total scores, Factor 1 and Factor 2 scores) and FNC states obtained from dFNC analysis. FNC over the scan duration was better represented by five states rather than one state previously shown in static FNC analysis. Consistent with prior findings, psychopathy was associated with networks from paralimbic regions (amygdala and insula). In addition, whole-brain FNC identified 15 networks from nine functional domains (subcortical, auditory, sensorimotor, cerebellar, visual, salience, default mode network, executive control and attentional) related to psychopathy traits (Factor 1 and PCL-R scores). Results also showed that individuals with higher Factor 1 scores (affective and interpersonal traits) spend more time in a state with weaker connectivity overall, and changed states less frequently compared to those with lower Factor 1 scores. On the other hand, individuals with higher Factor 2 scores (impulsive and antisocial behaviors) showed more dynamism (changes to and from different states) than those with lower scores.

YNICL Journal 2018 Journal Article

Abnormal cortical gyrification in criminal psychopathy

Tara A. Miskovich
Nathaniel E. Anderson
Carla L. Harenski
Keith A. Harenski
Arielle R. Baskin-Sommers
Christine L. Larson
Joseph P. Newman
Jessica L. Hanson

Background: Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by interpersonal and emotional abnormalities (e.g., lack of empathy and guilt) and antisocial behavior. Psychopathy has been associated with a number of structural brain abnormalities, most notably in orbital frontal and anterior/medial temporal regions, that may underlie psychopathic individuals' problematic behaviors. Past research evaluating cortical structure in psychopathy has considered thickness and volume, but to date no study has investigated differences in cortical gyrification, a measure of cortical complexity thought to reflect early neurodevelopmental cortical connectivity. Methods: We measured the local gyrification index (LGI) in a sample of 716 adult male inmates and performed a whole brain analysis assessing the relationship between LGI and total and factor scores on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Results: PCL-R scores were negatively associated with LGI measures within the right hemisphere in the midcingulate cortex (MCC) and adjacent regions of the superior frontal gyrus as well as lateral superior parietal cortex. Additionally, PCL-R Factor 1 scores (interpersonal/affective traits) predicted less LGI within the right MCC and adjacent dorsomedial frontal cortex and greater LGI in bilateral occipital cortex. Scores on PCL-R Factor 2, indicating impulsivity and antisocial behaviors, did not predict LGI in any regions. Conclusions: These findings suggest that psychopathy, particularly the interpersonal and affective traits, are associated with specific structural abnormalities that form during neurodevelopment and these abnormalities may underlie aberrant brain functioning in regions important in emotional processing and cognitive control.

YNICL Journal 2018 Journal Article

Age of gray matters: Neuroprediction of recidivism

Kent A. Kiehl
Nathaniel E. Anderson
Eyal Aharoni
J.Michael Maurer
Keith A. Harenski
Vikram Rao
Eric D. Claus
Carla Harenski

Age is one of the best predictors of antisocial behavior. Risk models of recidivism often combine chronological age with demographic, social and psychological features to aid in judicial decision-making. Here we use independent component analyses (ICA) and machine learning techniques to demonstrate the utility of using brain-based measures of cerebral aging to predict recidivism. First, we developed a brain-age model that predicts chronological age based on structural MRI data from incarcerated males (n = 1332). We then test the model's ability to predict recidivism in a new sample of offenders with longitudinal outcome data (n = 93). Consistent with hypotheses, inclusion of brain-age measures of the inferior frontal cortex and anterior-medial temporal lobes (i. e. , amygdala) improved prediction models when compared with models using chronological age; and models that combined psychological, behavioral, and neuroimaging measures provided the most robust prediction of recidivism. These results verify the utility of brain measures in predicting future behavior, and suggest that brain-based data may more precisely account for important variation when compared with traditional proxy measures such as chronological age. This work also identifies new brain systems that contribute to recidivism which has clinical implications for treatment development.

YNICL Journal 2015 Journal Article

Association of regional gray matter volumes in the brain with disruptive behavior disorders in male and female children

Kalina J. Michalska
Jean Decety
Thomas A. Zeffiro
Benjamin B. Lahey

Because the disruptive behavior disorders are highly impairing conditions, it is important to determine if structural variations in brain are associated early in life with these problems among children. Structural MRI data were acquired from 111 9-11 year olds (58 girls and 53 boys), 43 who met diagnostic criteria for oppositional defiant disorder and/or conduct disorder and 68 healthy controls. Voxel-based morphometry was used to examine associations of behavioral measures with gray matter volumes in whole-brain analyses. Unlike previous studies, variation in gray matter volume was not found to be associated with a disruptive behavior disorder diagnosis in any brain region at p < .05 with FWE correction. Nonetheless, an inverse nonlinear association of the number of conduct disorder (CD) symptoms with gray matter volume along the left superior temporal sulcus was significant in the full sample (p < .05 with FWE correction), with a trend in the right hemisphere (p < 0.001 uncorrected). There also was a trend toward a stronger association of the number of CD symptoms with gray matter volume along the left superior temporal sulcus in girls than boys. The present findings did not replicate previous findings of reduced gray matter volumes in the anterior insula, amygdala, and frontal cortex in youth with CD, but are consistent with previous findings of reduced gray matter volumes in temporal regions, particularly in girls.

YNIMG Journal 2015 Journal Article

Individual differences in local gray matter density are associated with differences in affective and cognitive empathy

Robert Eres
Jean Decety
Winnifred R. Louis
Pascal Molenberghs

The understanding of empathy from a neuroscientific perspective has recently developed quickly, with numerous functional MRI studies associating different brain regions with different components of empathy. A recent meta-analysis across 40 fMRI studies revealed that affective empathy is most often associated with increased activity in the insula, whereas cognitive empathy is most often associated with activity in the midcingulate cortex and adjacent dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (MCC/dmPFC). To date, however, it remains unclear whether individual differences in brain morphometry in these regions underlie different dispositions in affective and cognitive empathy. In order to test this hypothesis, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to examine the extent to which gray matter density predicts scores from an established empathy measure (Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy; QCAE). One hundred and seventy-six participants completed the QCAE and underwent MRI in order to acquire a high-resolution, three-dimensional T1-weighted structural scans. A factor analysis of the questionnaire scores revealed two distinct factors of empathy, affective and cognitive, which confirmed the validity of the QCAE. VBM results revealed gray matter density differences associated with the distinct components of empathy. Higher scores on affective empathy were associated with greater gray matter density in the insula cortex and higher scores of cognitive empathy were associated with greater gray matter density in the MCC/dmPFC. Taken together, these results provide validation for empathy being a multi-component construct, suggesting that affective and cognitive empathy are differentially represented in brain morphometry as well as providing convergent evidence for empathy being represented by different neural and structural correlates.

YNIMG Journal 2011 Journal Article

Meta-analytic evidence for common and distinct neural networks associated with directly experienced pain and empathy for pain

Claus Lamm
Jean Decety
Tania Singer

A growing body of evidence suggests that empathy for pain is underpinned by neural structures that are also involved in the direct experience of pain. In order to assess the consistency of this finding, an image-based meta-analysis of nine independent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) investigations and a coordinate-based meta-analysis of 32 studies that had investigated empathy for pain using fMRI were conducted. The results indicate that a core network consisting of bilateral anterior insular cortex and medial/anterior cingulate cortex is associated with empathy for pain. Activation in these areas overlaps with activation during directly experienced pain, and we link their involvement to representing global feeling states and the guidance of adaptive behavior for both self- and other-related experiences. Moreover, the image-based analysis demonstrates that depending on the type of experimental paradigm this core network was co-activated with distinct brain regions: While viewing pictures of body parts in painful situations recruited areas underpinning action understanding (inferior parietal/ventral premotor cortices) to a stronger extent, eliciting empathy by means of abstract visual information about the other's affective state more strongly engaged areas associated with inferring and representing mental states of self and other (precuneus, ventral medial prefrontal cortex, superior temporal cortex, and temporo-parietal junction). In addition, only the picture-based paradigms activated somatosensory areas, indicating that previous discrepancies concerning somatosensory activity during empathy for pain might have resulted from differences in experimental paradigms. We conclude that social neuroscience paradigms provide reliable and accurate insights into complex social phenomena such as empathy and that meta-analyses of previous studies are a valuable tool in this endeavor.

YNIMG Journal 2010 Journal Article

Atypical development of white matter microstructure in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders

Yawei Cheng
Kun-Hsien Chou
I-Yun Chen
Yang-Teng Fan
Jean Decety
Ching-Po Lin

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) indicate aberrant neurodevelopment of frontal white matter (WM), potentially underlying abnormal social cognition and communication in ASD. Here, we further use tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) to examine the developmental change of WM skeleton (i. e. , the most compact whole-brain WM) during adolescence in ASD. This whole-brain DTI used TBSS measures fractional anisotropy (FA) and longitudinal and radial diffusivities in fifty adolescents, 25 ASD and 25 controls. Results show that adolescents with ASD versus controls had significantly reduced FA in the right posterior limb of internal capsule (increased radial diffusivity distally and reduced longitudinal diffusivity centrally). Adolescents with ASD versus controls (covarying for age and IQ) had significantly greater FA in the frontal lobe (reduced radial diffusivity), right cingulate gyrus (reduced radial diffusivity), bilateral insula (reduced radial diffusivity and increased longitudinal diffusivity), right superior temporal gyrus (reduced radial diffusivity), and bilateral middle cerebellar peduncle (reduced radial diffusivity). Notably, a significant interaction with age by group was found in the right paracentral lobule and bilateral superior frontal gyrus as indicated by an age-related FA gain in the controls whilst an age-related FA loss in the ASD. To our knowledge, this is the first study to use TBSS to examine WM in individuals with ASD. Our findings indicate that the frontal lobe exhibits abnormal WM microstructure as well as an aberrant neurodevelopment during adolescence in ASD, which support the frontal disconnectivity theory of autism.

YNIMG Journal 2010 Journal Article

Love hurts: An fMRI study

Yawei Cheng
Chenyi Chen
Ching-Po Lin
Kun-Hsien Chou
Jean Decety

Being in a close relationship is essential to human existence. Such closeness can be described as including other in the self and be underpinned on social attachment system, which evolved from a redirection of nociceptive mechanisms. To what extent does imagining a loved-one differs from imagining an unfamiliar individual being in painful situations? In this functional MRI study, participants were exposed to animated stimuli depicting hands or feet in painful and non-painful situations, and instructed to imagine these scenarios from three different perspectives: self, loved-one and stranger after being primed with their respective photographs. In line with previous studies, the three perspectives were associated with activation of the neural network involved in pain processing. Specifically, adopting the perspective of a loved-one increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and insula, whereas imagining a stranger induced a signal increase in the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and superior frontal gyrus. The closer the participants' relationships were with their partner, the greater the deactivation in the right TPJ. A negative effective connectivity between the right TPJ and the insula, and a positive one with the superior frontal gyrus were found when participants imagined the perspective of a stranger. These results demonstrate that intimacy affects the bottom-up information processing involved in empathy, as indicated by greater overlap between neural representations of the self and the other.

YNIMG Journal 2010 Journal Article

Physicians down-regulate their pain empathy response: An event-related brain potential study

Jean Decety
Chia-Yan Yang
Yawei Cheng

Watching or imagining other people experiencing pain activates the central nervous system's pain matrix in the observer. Without emotion regulation skills, repeated exposure to the suffering of others in healthcare professionals may be associated with the adverse consequences of personal distress, burnout and compassion fatigue, which are detrimental to their wellbeing. Here, we recorded event-related potentials (ERP) from physicians and matched controls as they were presented with visual stimuli depicting body parts pricked by a needle (pain) or touched by a Q-tip (no-pain). The results showed early N110 differentiation between pain and no-pain over the frontal area as well as late P3 over the centro-parietal regions were observed in the control participants. In contrast, no such early and late ERP responses were detected in the physicians. Our results indicate that emotion regulation in physicians has very early effects, inhibiting the bottom-up processing of the perception of pain in others. It is suggested that physicians' down-regulation of the pain response dampens their negative arousal in response to the pain of others and thus may have many beneficial consequences including freeing up cognitive resources necessary for being of assistance.

YNIMG Journal 2009 Journal Article

Social context and perceived agency affects empathy for pain: An event-related fMRI investigation

Yuko Akitsuki
Jean Decety

Studying of the impact of social context on the perception of pain in others is important for understanding the role of intentionality in interpersonal sensitivity, empathy, and implicit moral reasoning. Here we used an event-related fMRI with pain and social context (i. e. , the number of individuals in the stimuli) as the two factors to investigate how different social contexts and resulting perceived agency modulate the neural response to the perception of pain in others. Twenty-six healthy participants were scanned while presented with short dynamic visual stimuli depicting painful situations accidentally caused by or intentionally caused by another individual. The main effect of perception of pain was associated with signal increase in the aMCC, insula, somatosensory cortex, SMA and PAG. Importantly, perceiving the presence of another individual led to specific hemodynamic increase in regions involved in representing social interaction and emotion regulation including the temporoparietal junction, medial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and orbitofrontal cortex. Furthermore, the functional connectivity pattern between the left amygdala and other brain areas was modulated by the perceived agency. Our study demonstrates that the social context in which pain occurs modulate the brain response to other's pain. This modulation may reflect successful adaptation to potential danger present in a social interaction. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the neural mechanisms underpinning implicit moral reasoning that concern actions that can harm other people.

YNIMG Journal 2008 Journal Article

The perception of pain in others suppresses somatosensory oscillations: A magnetoencephalography study

Yawei Cheng
Chia-Yen Yang
Ching-Po Lin
Po-Lei Lee
Jean Decety

Accumulating evidence demonstrates that similar neural circuits are activated during the first-hand experience of pain and the observation of pain in others. However, most functional MRI studies did not detect signal change in the primary somatosensory cortex during pain empathy. To test if the perception of pain in others involves the primary somatosensory cortex, neuromagnetic oscillatory activity was recorded from the primary somatosensory cortex in 16 participants while they observed static pictures depicting body parts in painful and non-painful situations. The left median nerve was stimulated at the wrist, and the poststimulus rebounds of the ~10-Hz somatosensory cortical oscillations were quantified. Compared to the baseline condition, the level of the ~10-Hz oscillations was suppressed during both of the observational situations, indicating the activation of the primary somatosensory cortex. Importantly, watching painful compared to non-painful situations suppressed somatosensory oscillations to a significant stronger degree. In addition, the suppression caused by perceiving others in the painful relative to the non-painful situations correlated with the perspective taking subscale of the interpersonal reaction index. These results, consistent with the mirror-neuron system, demonstrate that the perception of pain in others modulates neural activity in primary somatosensory cortex and supports the idea that the perception of pain in others elicits subtle somatosensory activity that may be difficult to detect by fMRI techniques.

YNIMG Journal 2006 Journal Article

Neural circuits involved in imitation and perspective-taking

Philip L. Jackson
Andrew N. Meltzoff
Jean Decety

Is it important to adopt the perspective of the model when learning a new skill? Is the “mirror system” equally involved when the teacher is facing or side-by-side with students? In this functional MRI study, we measured the cerebral hemodynamic changes in participants who watched video-clips depicting simple hand or foot actions. The participants either watched passively or imitated these actions. Half the video-clips depicted actions filmed from the perspective of the participant (1st-person perspective) and half from a frontal view as if watching someone else (3rd-person perspective). Behavioral results showed that latency to imitate was significantly shorter for the 1st-person perspective than the 3rd-person perspective. Functional imaging results demonstrate that the observation of intransitive actions engaged primary visual and extrastriate visual areas, but not the premotor cortex. Imitation vs. observation of actions yielded enhanced signal in the contralateral somatosensory and motor cortices, cerebellum, left inferior parietal lobule and superior parietal cortex, and left ventral premotor cortex. Activity in the lateral occipital cortex around the extrastriate body area was significantly enhanced during imitation, as compared to observation of actions confirming that this region involvement reaches beyond the perception of body parts. Moreover, comparisons of the two visual perspectives showed more activity in the left sensory–motor cortex for 1st-person, even during observation alone, and in the lingual gyrus for 3rd-person perspective. These findings suggest that the 1st-person perspective is more tightly coupled to the sensory-motor system than the 3rd-person perspective, which requires additional visuospatial transformation.

YNIMG Journal 2005 Journal Article

How do we perceive the pain of others? A window into the neural processes involved in empathy

Philip L. Jackson
Andrew N. Meltzoff
Jean Decety

To what extent do we share feelings with others? Neuroimaging investigations of the neural mechanisms involved in the perception of pain in others may cast light on one basic component of human empathy, the interpersonal sharing of affect. In this fMRI study, participants were shown a series of still photographs of hands and feet in situations that are likely to cause pain, and a matched set of control photographs without any painful events. They were asked to assess on-line the level of pain experienced by the person in the photographs. The results demonstrated that perceiving and assessing painful situations in others was associated with significant bilateral changes in activity in several regions notably, the anterior cingulate, the anterior insula, the cerebellum, and to a lesser extent the thalamus. These regions are known to play a significant role in pain processing. Finally, the activity in the anterior cingulate was strongly correlated with the participants' ratings of the others' pain, suggesting that the activity of this brain region is modulated according to subjects' reactivity to the pain of others. Our findings suggest that there is a partial cerebral commonality between perceiving pain in another individual and experiencing it oneself. This study adds to our understanding of the neurological mechanisms implicated in intersubjectivity and human empathy.

YNIMG Journal 2004 Journal Article

The neural bases of cooperation and competition: an fMRI investigation

Jean Decety
Philip L. Jackson
Jessica A. Sommerville
Thierry Chaminade
Andrew N. Meltzoff

Cooperation and competition are two basic modes of social cognition that necessitate monitoring of both one's own and others' actions, as well as adopting a specific mental set. In this fMRI, study individuals played a specially designed computer game, according to a set of predefined rules, either in cooperation with or in competition against another person. The hemodynamic response during these conditions was contrasted to that of the same subjects playing the game independently. Both cooperation and competition stances resulted in activation of a common frontoparietal network subserving executive functions, as well as the anterior insula, involved in autonomic arousal. Moreover, distinct regions were found to be selectively associated with cooperation and competition, notably the orbitofrontal cortex in the former and the inferior parietal and medial prefrontal cortices in the latter. This pattern reflects the different mental frameworks implicated in being cooperative versus competitive with another person. In accordance with evidence from evolutionary psychology as well as from developmental psychology, we argue that cooperation is a socially rewarding process and is associated with specific left medial orbitofrontal cortex involvement.

YNIMG Journal 2002 Journal Article

Does the End Justify the Means? A PET Exploration of the Mechanisms Involved in Human Imitation

Thierry Chaminade
Andrew N. Meltzoff
Jean Decety

Imitation is a natural mechanism involving perception–action coupling which plays a foundational role in human development, in particular to extract the intention from the surface behavior exhibited by others. The aim of this H15 2O PET activation experiment was to investigate the neural basis of imitation of object-oriented actions in normal adults. Experimental conditions were derived from a factorial design. The factors were: (a) is the stimulus event shown to subjects during observation of the model and (b) is the response manipulation performed by the subject. Two key components of human action, the goal and the means to achieve it, were systematically investigated. The results revealed partially overlapping clusters of increased regional cerebral blood flow in the right dorsolateral prefrontal area and in cerebellum when subjects imitated either of the two components. Moreover, specific activity was detected in the medial prefrontal cortex during the imitation of the means, whereas imitating the goal was associated with increased activity in the left premotor cortex. Our results suggest that for normally functioning adults, imitating a gesture activates neural processing of the intention (or goal) underlying the observed action.

YNIMG Journal 2001 Journal Article

Does Perception of Biological Motion Rely on Specific Brain Regions?

Julie Grèzes
Pierre Fonlupt
Bennett Bertenthal
Chantal Delon-Martin
Christoph Segebarth
Jean Decety

Perceptionof biological motions plays a major adaptive role in identifying, interpreting, and predicting the actions of others. It may therefore be hypothesized that the perception of biological motions is subserved by a specific neural network. Here we used fMRI to verify this hypothesis. In a group of 10 healthy volunteers, we explored the hemodynamic responses to seven types of visual motion displays: drifting random dots, random dot cube, random dot cube with masking elements, upright point-light walker, inverted point-light walker, upright point-light walker display with masking elements, and inverted point-light walker display with masking elements. A gradient in activation was observed in the occipitotemporal junction. The responses to rigid motion were localized posteriorly to those responses elicited by nonrigid motions. Our results demonstrate that in addition to the posterior portion of superior temporal sulcus, the left intraparietal cortex is involved in the perception of nonrigid biological motions.

YNIMG Journal 2000 Journal Article

A PET Investigation of the Attribution of Intentions with a Nonverbal Task

Eric Brunet
Yves Sarfati
Marie-Christine Hardy-Baylé
Jean Decety

Several authors have demonstrated that theory of mind is associated with a cerebral pattern of activity involving the medial prefrontal cortex. This study was designed to determine the cerebral regions activated during attribution of intention to others, a task which requires theory-of-mind skills. Eight healthy subjects performed three nonverbal tasks using comic strips while PET scanning was performed. One condition required subjects to attribute intentions to the characters of the comic strips. The other two conditions involved only physical logic and knowledge about objects' properties: one condition involved characters, whereas the other only represented objects. The comparison of the attribution of intention condition with the physical logic with characters condition was associated with rCBF increases in the right middle and medial prefrontal cortex including Brodmann's area (BA) 9, the right inferior prefrontal cortex (BA 47), the right inferior temporal gyrus (BA 20), the left superior temporal gyrus (BA 38), the left cerebellum, the bilateral anterior cingulate, and the middle temporal gyri (BA 21). The comparison of the physical logic with characters condition and the physical logic without characters condition showed the activation of the lingual gyri (BA 17, 18, 19), the fusiform gyri (BA 37), the middle (BA 21) and superior (BA 22, 38) temporal gyri on both sides, and the posterior cingulate. These data suggest that attribution of intentions to others is associated with a complex cerebral activity involving the right medial prefrontal cortex when a nonverbal task is used. The laterality of this function is discussed.

YNIMG Journal 1999 Journal Article

Human Brain Activity Related to the Perception of Spatial Features of Objects

Isabelle Faillenot
Jean Decety
Marc Jeannerod

The role of the parietal cortex in visuospatial analysis of object was investigated by cerebral blood flow measurements in seven subjects using positron emission tomography. Data were acquired while subjects performed a matching task requiring the discrimination of simultaneously presented objects based on one of their spatial properties. Three properties were studied separately during three scanning conditions repeated twice: surface orientation, principal axis orientation, and size. Scans were also obtained during a sensorimotor control task (similar visual stimulation, same motor action, voluntary saccades toward each object) as well as during rest (no stimulation, eyes closed). Compared to rest, the three property matching tasks showed the same pattern of activation: the whole occipital lobe, the right intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and the right occipitotemporal (OT) junction. Compared to the control condition, only right IPS and OT junction were significantly activated during discrimination of the spatial properties. The IPS focus was located between the superior parietal lobule and the angular gyrus, and the OT activation overlapped the posterior part of the inferior temporal gyrus and the middle occipital gyrus. These results indicate that discrimination of spatial attributes requires the activation of both the parietal and the temporal cortices of the right hemisphere and provide further evidence that the IPS plays a critical role in visuospatial analysis of objects.

YNIMG Journal 1998 Journal Article

Brain Regions Involved in the Perception of Gaze: A PET Study

Bruno Wicker
François Michel
Marie-Anne Henaff
Jean Decety

Mutual gaze may be described as a psychological process during which two persons have the feeling of a brief link between their two minds. In the monkey, specific cell assemblies in the superior temporal cortex of the brain are responsive to gaze. This suggests that the brain may have evolved mechanisms for interpreting direct eye contact. These mechanisms could depend on the activation of specific brain regions. Positron emission tomography was used to measure activity in brain regions in healthy volunteers while they were looking at faces featuring, respectively, eye contact, averted gaze, or no gaze. As expected a region known to be involved in face processing was found to be activated in the ventral occipito-temporal region, especially in the right hemisphere. Averted gaze and mutual gaze triggered blood flow responses in similar areas which were different from those involved in face processing. These areas included the occipital part of the fusiform gyrus, the right parietal lobule, the right inferior temporal gyrus, and the middle temporal gyrus in both hemispheres. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that perception of eyes regardless of the direction of the gaze is subserved by a distributed network. However, no conclusive evidence was found for specific area(s) devoted to mutual gaze processing.